Dreams and Nightmares
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Otokoyo: it's a game that, win or lose, rewrites their world. Sorincha has learnt this, and now Hikora will learn it too.
1. Dream I

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

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**Dreams and Nightmares  
1. Dream I**

Sorincha thinks the world is prettier now, when she takes her mask off and falls asleep and run like a free butterfly on the still green grass and reach out for those yellow lights. It's not dull and frightening like before: that Tokyo that had no blue sky and always stole children away in the night…

Like her, but she's fine with it now because she can see the pretty world: the dream they hadn't had before. And when she is awake now and with her mask on she can be blind to the decay and deaf to the screams.


	2. Dream II

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

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**Dreams and Nightmares  
2. Dream II**

Sorincha is excited when she hears her brother is coming to visit them: the real Tokyo. But when she meets him with her mask on she frightens him and he runs.

So she takes her mask off and curls around it, letting sleep and happy dreams take her to grassy plains that sway in the wind and ruffle the white summer dress she's suddenly in.

When her mask slips away from her when she sleeps, she doesn't terribly mind: the dreams are more important.


	3. Nightmare I

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
3. Nightmare I**

Before Sorincha got her mask and her dreams, there had only been nightmares for her…and for every other child who saw Tokyo out their window, and stayed away from it. It was the whisper that went with every scolding, the horror that came with every dark night they lived through: the city that devoured children to stay so painfully bright.

It was like a horror house that frightened the good of them and made curious the bad. Or a concept of one, because when she finally entered that city and passed the nightmare it became a dream…that she'd never leave.


	4. Dream III

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
4. Dream III**

And she had no reason to want to leave this dream. When she'd lived, outside the city, the world had been a dark place with the only light coming from the city their parents told would steal naught children's souls away. And she wasn't naughty, not at all…but, perhaps like every other child in the world, she longed for a little light.

And now she has it, when she closes her eyes and the mask that covers her face can come off. She can chase those lights and stand under the lamp shade as long as she wants: for forever.


	5. Nightmare II

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
5. Nightmare II**

She'd thought, once upon a time in that little span of life where fairy-tales had existed, before she became old enough to suffer nightmares for what they were, that she'd get to live in a world full of sunlight and happiness. When she'd had her picture-book with that yellow circle in the middle of it –

But that was before the purge that wiped out what proof remained of the old world. And then it was just the stories those old people who still remembered could tell, as the world grew slowly colder and people began to wander like dreamless wraiths.


	6. Dream IV

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

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**Dreams and Nightmares  
6. Dream IV**

As for entering the city that stole children's souls…she'd never dreamed she'd do it. That sounded like something her sometimes stupid brother would do instead, with his friends playing adventure while fighting away the shadows that followed them into the countryside.

But not her. She was the good girl who didn't go around chasing scary shadows…but then those shadows became more than shadows. The countryside they lived in seemed to get emptier and emptier…and then their friends started vanishing. And others followed…and, eventually, Sorincha followed her friends in following them, making a mask for herself because that was the rule.


	7. Dream V

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
7. Dream V**

The mask was an interesting change: it gave her courage where she'd never felt it before, because her face was hidden and all the fear that lived there as well. It was like she was a different person: a heroine in a dream off to save her friends and the world…

And never mind her knees were shaking underneath her dress and her voice was just a tiny squeak. After all, they were just a bunch of girls: what good would they be? But they'd been running from shadows all their lives and – and fighting what they couldn't run from.


	8. Nightmare III

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
8. Nightmare III**

When they'd first entered the city, it had been a living nightmare. They'd screamed straight away when the light vanished and they'd scattered in the darkness, masks firmly on their faces and lost, completely lost. If they ran into each other afterwards, it was a stranger with a mask. They hadn't paid close enough attention to the masks they'd made for themselves, and now it was too late.

And then there were the demons, worse than anything they'd dreamt about before: a nightmare they couldn't wake up from. Sorincha screamed again and again – but nothing came to wake her up.


	9. Nightmare IV

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
9. Nightmare IV**

The nightmare went on. Sorincho ran, on her own, away from the demons and the shadows. She ran until she tripped, or was grabbed. Then she'd cry or scream…and then get herself free and continue running, all the time going deeper and deeper into the heart of Tokyo, into the city that should have been her home if the world hadn't turned.

But she was growing closer to the lights as well, closer to everything: the friends she'd lost, the ones she'd come looking for…and the dreams she'd never known, sleeping amongst those lights she'd eventually reach…and be protected by.


	10. Nightmare V

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
10. Nightmare V**

And then the nightmare was swallowed up by the light she stumbled upon, like a dying woman collapsing on the doorway of a mirage. The light was nice and fuzzy and warm, and she felt she had to take her mask off and look at it.

She did, and the light stole away her sight and consciousness, and she floated, amidst the light until it found a pretty dream to set her within.

And there were no shadows in that dream: just lights that could turn into butterflies for her to chase, happily, until she woke and replaced her mask.


	11. Dream VI

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
11. Dream VI**

After that, she left on her mask in the days, so the light would reflect those glassy eyes and hide the shadows from the world, and took it off in the nights so she could chase those lights in her dreams.

For they were dreams now, not nightmares: dreams that had sweet whistling wind and singing voices, and she could part her lips and sing along with them as well, sing without the screams of terror that had sprung from those nightmare days.

And then someone came. She recognised him. Hikora. Coming to take her back to their nightmare home.


	12. Dream VII

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
12. Dream VII**

Sorincha wasn't willing to give up her dreams, even if it did make her happy Hikora would come for her. But he should, just like she'd come for her friends, who'd gone for their friends…and that was the cruel circle of fate that had ensnared them.

Not that she minded, because the light in Tokyo city was far better than what they had in the countryside, and the shadows did not reach so deep. It was the perfect dream world: a paradise, and she could bear to awaken from it because the days did not scream those dark country nightmares.


	13. Nightmare VI

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
13. Nightmare VI**

This time, it was Hikora's turn to have the nightmare. He'd always had them, like every other child in the Tokyo's countryside, watching those eerily flickering lights powered by children's souls. But he'd stopped screaming to them, stopped when Sorincha had been born, because he had to be a brave big brother to his little sister. He had to be strong for her.

But his worst nightmares were of Sorincha being swept away, swallowed up by that city, by those lights, strung up high and being sucked for the power that fuelled them, whatever strange and horrible power that was.


	14. Nightmare VII

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
14. Nightmare VII**

And then the nightmare came true. Sorincha was gone, into the city, and he couldn't chase after her. Not right away, because the gates closed themselves and he needed friends, more people, to enter that city. To play the game of otokoyo, that whispering voice in the winds said to him, but he wasn't going to play a game in a haunted city. He was going for his sister.

And finally the gates opened and he found others and he ran through empty streets littered with shadows, shouting his sister's name. But Sorincha didn't come, and the nightmare didn't end.


	15. Nightmare VIII

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
15. Nightmare VIII**

And then the demons started coming out. Frightening things worse than the shadows that had chased them in the countryside. Things that his bamboo sword couldn't cut, that his master who'd loved Sorincha and him enough to teach them how to fight and protect them, could not fight off for him or with him…

And those nightmares chased him with screams and bleeding bones and they ran deeper into the cities, the cries for Sorincha becoming softer, more sparse, as the desperation grew. His comrades fell one by one, dying screams echoing through the streets.

Sorincha…could be dead as well.


	16. Nightmare IX

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
16. Nightmare IX**

_Sorincha could be dead_.

That thought made him stumble, made him slow. But still he went on, deeper and deeper into the city, calling her name and refusing, refusing to believe she could be, that he'd lost her.

And, eventually, it was just him trudging on, his master collapsing behind him with the tinkling sound of demonic laughter behind him. And a girl stood in front of him, in the uniform all the little girls in the countryside wore, smiling at him beneath the mask.

_That could be Sorincha_.

But that mask couldn't be Sorincha's work. Sorincha was too sweet.


	17. Nightmare X

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
17. Nightmare X**

When the girl took of her mask, Hikora realised she _was_ Sorincha. Even if the mask was so different. Even if she'd looked unrecognisable until the mask had come off. Even if her skin was, even now, white like the corpse in his nightmares, and her eyes like glass, reflecting the light around – the light empowered by the souls of children like them.

But it was Sorincha, and he reached for her. She put her mask in his hands. 'Come,' she said, laughing. 'Dream with me, brother.'

'Sorincha!' he screamed. She moved away from him, behind him, out of sight.


	18. Nightmare XI

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
18. Nightmare XI**

Sorincha was gone, behind him, her hands hooking under the ties of his paper mask, pulling it away from his face. His breath caught, and his own hands came up to stop her, but the she laughed again and he froze.

The mask came off, and the light ate at his eyes, at his vision. 'It's okay,' Sorincha whispered to him, her voice cold and stinging like the harsh wind that slapped at him. 'The nightmares will go away now.'

And her voice continued like that, through that – through the pain that grew from those burning eyes, that freezing skin…


	19. Dream VIII

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
19. Dream VIII**

Everything vanished at some point, but it took it with it the last nightmare he'd ever have, because he awoke afterwards surrounded by light that was warm and inviting and holding him up, and a gentle breeze that invited him to lush green fields he could dash over and low flowing rivers he could run in and soak his pants through.

But Sorincha wasn't there. Only her mask, in his hands. And he wondered where she'd gone. Not with the desperation he'd searched the city for her though. That desperation was gone. He knew Sorincha was happy in her dream.


	20. Nightmare XII

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
20. Nightmare XII**

He still had the mask so he had to wake from his dream, wait until new people came, with their nightmares, so that he could surrender his mask. And he dreamt and woke until he heard the screams that told him to wait under the lights with his mask and watch the demons make short work of those wandering souls.

And one would slip past, did slip past, to him, and he showed the lights that his sister had showed him: the lights that would take those nightmares.

And then he gave his mask, and slipped into the lights forevermore.


	21. Dream IX

**A/N:** Written for the Duel World Challenge, vs. Nightmare Penguin.

* * *

**Dreams and Nightmares  
21. Dream IX**

Without the mask, he didn't need to wake again – and he was no longer alone. Sorincha was suddenly back, running atop the hills with him, through the grassy plains and the riverbeds…and so were all those friends they'd lost before that, all the children devoured by the city, happy, in their dream.

And the dream went on, because someone else bore the mask now, bore the task of waiting for the next, before passing on. And outside, beyond their laughter and their smiles, the cycle continued on. Hikora's friends came for him, just as Sorincha's had come for her. And all were devoured by that light, into the never-ending dream.


End file.
